Search Google Appliance

Domestic Furnishings

Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.

The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.

This object is a sugar tong bearing the mark of Paul Revere’s silver shop. It is in bow form with tapering arms and acorn-shaped hollow tips. Wriggle work lines are etched into the outside border of the arms and bow, a cross-hatch pattern enclosing dots is on the cap of the acorn-shaped tips and wriggle work and a bright-cut eclipse enclosing an engraved crest is on the bow.

Paul Revere Jr. trained with his father, Paul Revere Sr., in the silversmith trade. After his father’s death in 1754, the shop passed over to Revere Jr. It was a large and active shop where all manner of items were made or repaired. Revere also ran a very diverse business providing various services as well importing goods from overseas. In the post-war period, he greatly expanded his business services and brought his son into the business with him.

This quilt top has a binding, but no filling or lining. Perhaps it was meant to be lined and quilted; instead the edges were bound, making it a light-weight bedcover. Pieced and appliquéd techniques provide the frame for a central panel that resembles a small sampler.

Delicate silk embroidery depicts a leafy harp surrounded by hearts, trees topped with red crested birds, potted plants, and the inscription, “Elenor Dolen Roxbury.” Most likely it refers to Roxbury, Massachusetts. The quilt top was donated by a collector of early American domestic furnishings.

In 1802 Simon Willard (1753-1848) of Boston obtained a U.S. patent for a timepiece as original as it was successful. The banjo clock, nicknamed for its characteristic shape, established the independence of American clockmaking from European traditions. Its design was perfect from the beginning. Vast numbers have been manufactured without notable modification, and its production continues today.

Willard's banjo clock was a lightly built, compact wall timekeeper, about three feet tall, accurate and dependable. It was economical to produce, graceful in appearance, and usually lacked hour-striking and alarm mechanisms. Weight-driven, it contained a small brass movement similar to that of the Massachusetts shelf clock, but further reduced in size and weight. The movement had been calculated so that a small drop of the weight (only fifteen inches as compared to about six feet for a tall case clock) would keep it running for eight days. For ease of maintenance, its pendulum was hung in front of the movement, not behind, as in tall case or Massachusetts shelf clocks, an arrangement that American clockmakers soon widely adopted.

Several thousand banjo clocks were probably built in Simon Willard's own shop. But he also freely permitted his numerous clockmaking relatives, former apprentices, and other clockmakers to produce according to his design. The signature on the banjo clock pictured here is that of Willard's brother Aaron (1757-1844). The timepiece features an unusual alarm arrangement on top of the case. The mahogany case itself is singularly plain compared to Aaron Willard's brightly painted and gilded pieces.

Certain factors peculiar to the American colonies guided the inventive activities of colonial clockmakers. Brass, the customary material for clock movements, was expensive. The market for large, complex, and costly clocks was small; people wanted inexpensive, reliable timekeepers. American clockmakers responded by substituting wood for brass, designing radically new case styles, and introducing mass production.

The shelf clock, a distinctly American design, fitted conditions in the colonies perfectly. The Massachusetts shelf clock, or half clock, was developed in the 1770s, with the Boston area's Willard brothers playing leading roles. Massachusetts clockmakers continued to produce it for about half a century thereafter. It was in essence a tall case clock with the trunk left out, consisting only of a hood and base about three feet tall. Its brass movement resembled the traditional tall case movement, only simplified and much reduced in size.

The specimen shown is marked "Aaron Willard/Boston." Like his older brothers Benjamin and Simon, Aaron Willard (1757-1844) moved from the family homestead in Grafton, Massachusetts, to Boston around 1780, where he became a prolific and prosperous clockmaker. He retired in 1823 and turned his business over to his son Aaron, Jr. The clock is of a design that Aaron produced late in his career and apparently in considerable numbers. The clock is an eight-day "timepiece," that is, a timekeeper without the means to strike the hours. Instead it has an alarm mechanism that creates a rousing noise by rapping the inside of the wooden case.

This tall vase, made around 1900 at the Grueby Faience Company in Boston MA, represents well the influence of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic in American pottery. Boston’s Society of Arts and Crafts, established in 1897, promoted a return to handcraft production, based on the model of English reformers like William Morris and John Ruskin who sought harmony of form, decoration, and function, and an enhanced satisfaction with the handcraft tradition as an alternative to mechanical mass production.

William Grueby (1867-1925) was a member of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. Beginning in 1894 his Grueby Faience Company manufactured architectural tiles and terracotta moldings for the building trade, products which received favorable publicity. Illustrated in the magazine House Beautiful in December 1898, vases were a later addition to the company’s output. The designer of the Grueby vases was silversmith George Prentiss Kendrick, but William Grueby himself developed a novel range of matt glazes. The dark green version on this vase, “like the deepest green of a very dark melon,” invites us to touch the surface. The Grueby matt green glaze became a hallmark for the company’s art pottery.

The potter’s wheel was the only mechanical device used in the making of the Grueby vessels. Until he left the company in 1902 George Kendrick supervised the shaping of vessels on the wheel from his designs. He also supervised a team of workers who applied the plant motifs that form a relief over which the glaze breaks to reveal the light clay color underneath. Most of these modelers were young women trained in the Boston art schools.

Since the 1870s, Boston’s wealthy and civic minded elite encouraged reform in the visual arts through education, especially through its Museum of Fine Arts three-dimensional design and decoration program, and the state run Massachusetts Normal Art School, which offered training for the art industries. Art education brought employment opportunities to an increasing number of women, and their work underpinned the American Arts and Crafts movement in enterprises such as the Cincinnati Pottery Club, the Rookwood Pottery, and Tiffany Studios, long before William Grueby began to produce his vases. Grueby Faience Company modelers frequently applied a mark of identification to a vessel, but their work was not acknowledged in exhibition catalogues.

Grueby exhibited at the major world expositions, winning awards at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle that brought his pottery to the attention of the European market. A vase of this model was on exhibition there. Promotions by the Paris dealer Samuel Bing identified Grueby’s pottery with European art nouveau. In the United States Grueby collaborated with Tiffany & Co., most notably in the making of lamp stands, which emphasized a connection with the art nouveau style. However, in his collaboration with the furniture maker Gustav Stickley, it is Grueby’s roots in the American Arts and Crafts movement that predominate.

William Grueby acknowledged the influence of the French potter Auguste Delaherche (1857-1940) on the development of his ceramics, and it is not hard to see prototypes among Delaherche’s work for several Grueby vessels, including this vase. Delaherche’s work provided Grueby and Kendrick with a sound model, but from that base they later produced vessels with a distinctive character of their own, especially in the glazed and modeled surfaces. In 1902, a contemporary critic, Walter Ellsworth Gray, wrote an article in Brush and Pencil that described Grueby’s wares of a type “not…designed to catch the fancy of those who delight in excessive ornamentation, high or varied colors, or elaborate patterns. It is a pottery rather that appeals to those who are fond of simplicity of design and rich but subdued monotones.”

Grueby’s architectural moldings and tiles were made from a robust type of clay obtained from New Jersey and Martha’s Vineyard, and he used the same material for the pottery vessels. Consequently, this monumental vase is heavy, but stable, and its sturdiness affirms the handmade characteristics of Grueby wares. A strong tactile quality in the matt glaze that rolls over the surface of the vase refers us to the organic world of plant and vegetable, and at the turn of the twentieth century consumers found these qualities of harmony in form and surface immensely appealing. However, Grueby’s pots were expensive, and like most of the products of the Arts and Crafts movement, only affluent members of society could purchase these items for their homes.

The tub takes its name from its form in the shape of a hat. The patient sat either on the bath’s ledge or on a chair outside the tub with his or her feet and legs in the center of the basin. The Dover Stamping Company, a tinware firm in Boston, Massachusetts, listed this form as such in their 1869 catalog. The spout for emptying the bath water is beneath the ledge.

We know of Nathaniel Waterman, the tub’s maker, through his membership in the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association and his listings in the Boston City Directories at 85 Cornhill Street from 1842 to 1846. He learned the tinsmith trade at a young age and his firm, the Waterman Kitchen and House Furnishing Wareroom, existed in Boston for over forty years. According to accounts, his store was a “veritable museum of all conceivable household necessities and conveniences.”*

For more information on bathing and bathtubs in the 19th and early 20th centuries, please see the introduction to this online exhibition.

This print is one of fifteen chromolithographs that were included in the 1889-1890 folio "Sport or Fishing and Shooting" published by Bradlee Whidden of Boston and edited by A.C. Gould. These prints are based on watercolors that were commissioned for the publication, and illustrated by prominent American artists. Each folio illustration was accompanied by a single leaf of descriptive text followed by an account of the depicted sporting scene. The publication was advertised as having been reviewed for accuracy by a renowned group of anglers and hunters prior to printing.

This print was originally titled and numbered on the text page as 10. Sailing for Bluefish. Fred. S. Cozzens. It depicts three men in a sailboat. Two of the men are fishing and the third is steering the rudder. Other sailboats and a lighthouse are in background.

The artist was Frederic Schiller Cozzens (1846-1928) who was known for maritime scenes.

This print is one of fifteen chromolithographs that were included in the 1889-1890 folio "Sport or Fishing and Shooting" published by Bradlee Whidden of Boston and edited by A.C. Gould. These prints are based on watercolors that were commissioned for the publication, and illustrated by prominent American artists. Each folio illustration was accompanied by a single leaf of descriptive text followed by an account of the depicted sporting scene. The publication was advertised as having been reviewed for accuracy by a renowned group of anglers and hunters prior to printing.

This print was originally titled and numbered on the text page as 6. Catching a Tarpon. Fred S. Cozzens. It depicts a large tarpon jumping out of the water. Two men in a boat in the background are holding the line and attempting to pull the fish in. The scene was to have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida and the shoreline is depicted in the background.

The artist was Frederic Schiller Cozzens (1846-1928) who was known for maritime scenes.

This print is one of fifteen chromolithographs that were included in the 1889-1890 folio "Sport or Fishing and Shooting" published by Bradlee Whidden of Boston and edited by A.C. Gould. These prints are based on watercolors that were commissioned for the publication, and illustrated by prominent American artists. Each folio illustration was accompanied by a single leaf of descriptive text followed by an account of the depicted sporting scene. The publication was advertised as having been reviewed for accuracy by a renowned group of anglers and hunters prior to printing.

This print was originally titled and numbered on the text page as 4. Fly-fishing for Black Bass. S.F. Denton. Depicted is of a fisherman standing in a stream reeling in a fish.

The artist was Sherman Foote Denton (1856-1937), a naturalist and noted illustrator of drawings of fish. Denton also invented a method of mounting fish that preserved their colors as in life. His work was frequently commissioned by the U.S. Fish Commision, forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This print is one of fifteen chromolithographs that were included in the 1889-1890 folio "Sport or Fishing and Shooting" published by Bradlee Whidden of Boston and edited by A.C. Gould. These prints are based on watercolors that were commissioned for the publication, and illustrated by prominent American artists. Each folio illustration was accompanied by a single leaf of descriptive text followed by an account of the depicted sporting scene. The publication was advertised as having been reviewed for accuracy by a renowned group of anglers and hunters prior to printing.

This print was originally titled and numbered on the text page as 11. Hunting the [Virginia] Deer. A.B. Frost. It depicts a hunter crouched behind a log, aiming a rifle at a stag.

The artist was Arthur Burdette Frost (1851-1928), known for his wildlife and sporting scenes even though he had an aversion to deer hunting. Frost was a noted illustrator (Uncle Remus), even though he was color blind.